HimeHime

Dear Pussycats,

Rarely do I come across an artist where all I think is "YES!" when I hear their music for the first time. But recently I have, and I'm so happy I did. Lovely readers, may I introduce you to my favorite new artist, HimeHime and his newest album Cancer (available on spotify and embedded the bottom of this post!).

Cancer-Spotify Trailer from Anissa Amalia on Vimeo.

His sounds reminds me of what I imagine my iPhone's dreams sound like (if my iPhone had dreams, of course). It's magical, melodic and a little bit melancholy, aka and the perfect music for any sort of rainy day commute, or day spent thinking while lying down, starring at your ceiling fan.


With a song that secretly samples Mariah Carey, and another one titled, "Nails Emoji," Cancer should definitely intrigue you.


But what keeps you hooked throughout the entirety of this album are the intricate and delicate layered sounds and effects, and the emotional density that is conveyed effortlessly in each song. Thus lending this album to be the perfect soundtrack to your own internal dialogue... I only wish I discovered HimeHime sooner.


I was lucky enough to score an interview with not only the darling genius himself, Mackenzie, but also his Manager/Artistic Director, a DailySass favorite (former contributor AND #WCW), Anissa!

Onto Mackenzie's questions ~

1) Where do you hail from?
I grew up in Lake Stevens, Washington, but I moved to Seattle for school and I have been residing here for about 4 years now.

2) What was the first or most iconic song on your Myspace profile?
Helena by My Chemical Romance. I still have the music video stuck in my head after all these years.
(umm..hi, Caelan again, this answer is everything, I'm officially in love!...okay back to the interview!)

3) Where does the name "HimeHime" come from?
The name HimeHime comes from a duo project I was working on. "Hime" means princess in Japanese (hee-meh hee-meh ) which was derived from Princess Mononoke, where she is called "Hime" in the movie. Since it was a duo, I thought "HimeHime" worked, and even though it's just me now, I kept the name.

3) Favorite pizza topping?
I’m a spicy sausage type of guy ;)

Photo Credit: Noorsalam Ibrahim

4) What are you currently studying?
I studied Economics in College and graduated this year. In terms of my personal life, I’ve been studying a lot of synth design. I’m trying to become a master at this synth program called Massive.

5) What inspired this album?
This album was inspired by graduating college and the death of my grandparents. Both of them were diagnosed with Cancer and passed away. Their deaths and my graduation represented a chapter closing in my life and the album was the best way I could express my pain/fear/anxiety.

6) What's one secret from the making of this album?
If you listen to the track Anxiety, the vocal sample I use is Mariah Carey’s “Touch my Body” chopped up.
(Now you have to listen to this track, Mariah! Are you serious!?!!)

7) What piece from the album are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the last track “Living You.” My distributor misspelled the album “Missing You” on Spotify. This is the longest track I have ever made and it took me 3 months to make.

Photo Credit: Noorsalam Ibrahim
8 ) Tell us about your music video for Bad Dates? What was the initial idea behind it?
The initial idea came from wanting to make something with a colorful pallet design. We drew inspiration from a lot of various music videos which played with smoke and lighting. The song was inspired by bad dates, bad relationships, reading a lot of Mira Gonzalez and being depressed.

9) Where can we find your music and you on social media?
You can find all my music free at himehime.bandcamp.com, soundcloud.com/himehime, Spotify, or my tumblr himehimemusic.tumblr.com. I also have a twitter/instagram which I post really bizarre absurdist humor on @himehimemusic.

10) Favorite fruit? (If you don't understand this question, watch the music video for Bad Dates)
Grapefruit.

Now onto the questions for Anissa ~



1) When did you two meet?
We meet over the summer! Which was not long ago actually, like roughly around mid-June through a mutual friend.

2)What is your favorite song off the album?
Hmmm, my top two are Exit and Arrival and Unemployment (Interlude).


3) What inspired the music video for "Bad Dates"?
I can’t exactly remember what I was watching or thinking about at that time, but for whatever reason I wanted to make a video that has to do with fruits and slow motion, I just wanted it to be very very messy.

Photo Credit: Noorsalam Ibrahim
4) Favorite behind the scenes moment?
Hmmmm, that’s tough! The whole filming process was so much fun, but I guess my favorite part is when I’m actually surprised and blown away by the cast, in relate to their actions with the fruit I have given them. I didn’t really direct them that much, I just told them to “go crazy with the fruit,” and some of them did such an excellent job squishing and doing weird things with it hahaha. Also the moment when you wrap up the shoot, always my favorite part.

5) Favorite fruit?
I love a lot of fruits, but my top 5 will be:
1. Any berries, really, I love them all.
2. Pineapple
3. Mango
4. Peach
5. Pear
(Isn't she the best?)

Since you've made it this far, it would be insane not to give this album a listen. I can honestly tell you that you won't regret it! It's hard to pick a favorite because they are make me feel all sorts of feelings, but I'll go ahead and say "Bad Dates" and "Missing You" stand out to me in particular!


Which song is your favorite?

Also on a scale of 1 - 10, how bad do you wanna go on a fruit date with Mackenzie and have Anissa artistically direct your life? It would be beautiful :)

Keep it Sassy,
xoxo
Caelan - Caelan Hughes

Welcome to our weekly Breakthrough Thursdays, where we source the 20 best new tracks from upcoming, independent artists around the world. We love giving these guys an international platform to share their tunes; with the hundreds upon thousands of new songs coming out every day, it’s not always easy to get them heard, even when they’re really, really good.

As always, this list features a massive range of genres, styles and sounds. We recommend playing this on shuffle, or using the below annotations to check out what you might dig the most.

Enjoy!

1. Astral Skulls, Contact
A deep synth beat paves the way to guitar riffs, building a racy, invigorating atmosphere one layer at a time. Retro, crunchy and super cool.

2. The Pixies, Where Is My Mind? (Kelly McKellar cover ft. Anthony Custable)
A gorgeous electronic instrumental cover of one of my all time favourite tunes. Sit back and let yourself sink in.

3. Amycanbe, Queens (Dustin Lefholz remix)
Temperate and emotive, this slow-builder really draws you in to each hollowed beat and the slow, gorgeously breathy melody

4. Millennial, Paralysed
Spritely guitars, a comfortable groove and a radio-friendly melody make for smooth, easy-listening indie rock.

5. Pastel Mute, Totem
I love how the rhythms grows beneath the dark, seductive indie melody. An immersive, interesting layered track.

6. Chystyna Marie, Loaded Gun
This is a really sexy, bluesy track with rich, powerful vocals and a huge, glorious chorus. One of my favourites this week!

7. Plum, Light Years, Dark Years
This track is incredible. HUGE guitar riffs and a wicked melody, I immediately envisioned this going off in a festival tent somewhere.

8. Grandmax, Blue
Another instrumental slow-burner, this track builds slowly but surely, with a cruisey rhythm pulling it together. The best kind of chill-out music.

9. Bat Matt, BBBathtub
Indie rock with a bluesy twist, I love the melody, and it’s just awesome and hilarious to have lyrics like “rub-a-dub-dub-dub-dub, scrub-scrub-scrub-scrub” in a serious sounding song.

10. Overjoy, Airport Song
One for the house-heads. A gorgeous, progressive track with airy melodies and glistening synth trickles. Drawn out but never boring, I love it.

11. HimeHime, Living You
A ten-minute progressive track featuring everything from video-game bass to understated vocals, to guitars and screeching synths. Never a dull moment.

12. JJ Adrian, Right Now
Emotive club-ready R&B, with a massive rhythm and smooth, sensual vocals. The kind of awesomely overdone track you might hear on an episode of Empire.

13. Micah Williams, Wild Youth (prod. Andre Ossit & Jo FLX’N)
A HUGE beat and a menacingly understated flow makes this pick for best independent hip-hop this week. There’s big things coming for Micah.

14. Toni Basel, Mickey (Trishes cover)
I’ll bet you’ve never heard the famed track quite like this. Low, slow, seductive R&B, it’s a brilliant new spin on the classic track.

15. P’aris, Focus
Angelic electro-pop, featuring an almost childishly-innocent melody, backed by clean beats and a huge, uplifting chorus. Perfect for summer!

16. Punk Adams, Juicy (ft. Strange Source)
Juicy blends an atmospheric synth soundscape with slick hip-hop and velvety smooth vocal melodies. The flow is really chilled, it’s so easy to get into this one.

17. Cafuné, Warm Body
This is all kinds of fun. Huge beats, bubblegum synths and a cool, catchy melody. Another track for the summer playlist.

18. Zev Prince, PSA
An aggressive flow above a seriously old-school beat, and some brilliant wordplay make this a really impressive new release.

19. Ryan Torres, Lessons For Everything
I love the movement throughout this gorgeous, progressive electronic track. Immediately enveloping, you could easily play this over and over again.

20. Gaddy, H.E.R
I don’t come across instrumental, psychedelic trip-hop this good very often. Tipper-level playfulness and a myriad effects, layers and tone colours, this is my top pick this week. - Howl and Echoes

Less like a music festival and more like a large-scale art installation.”

That is how Corridor Festival organizer Kirsten Thom says she wants the one-day immersive event to feel. Large-scale indeed: Fourteen musicians, nine visual artists, and three dancers will present work at Georgetown’s cavernous Equinox Studios, a warehouse-cum-industrial cathedral with a central chamber nearly half the size of a football field. The day will be as long as the venue is large, which seems only right for an event with ambitions of this magnitude: to transcend the human necessity of being alone.

“I’m really interested in what happens to people in intense group situations,” organizer Matty McBride tells me. “We’ve seen it at parties at 5 a.m., but I was curious as to what a long-form daytime scenario would look like. Especially with this particular kind of music. It’s not really party music; there won’t be many beats, so why do people go? What are people looking for? I mean, I definitely don’t know. Intimacy, maybe?”

Perhaps it was these questions that motivated the foundation of Elevator by McBride and Thom in 2014. Bringing national touchstones of musical innovation, such as Holly Herndon, Laraaji, or Julia Holter, Elevator showcases experimental local talent that might otherwise have a hard time finding a bill. With help from other local collaborators and friends, the group is now presenting Corridor Festival, an event they hope will do a lot more than entertain.

“I think that something akin to magic exists,” says Thom. “It happens when you can feel a complete erosion of ego and you feel connected to the awareness that everything and everyone is part of a whole and that separation is an illusion. . . . If we can create a space where people feel totally comfortable being themselves and being fully present, it will feel magical.”

McBride agrees that this erosion of self is something art aspires to, but that breaking down ego is not a demolition, but “a production. An excess. Like a halo. It’s pretty tangible. I don’t even think it’s that woo-woo to say. You could call it ‘community,’ but I also don’t think it’s very permanent, so whatever we call it will disintegrate soon enough.”

The word “community” is thrown around so often in the arts world, it’s become a pretty hollow signifier, but maybe community is what a group like Elevator is shoring up with the fragments of that halo after the moment collapses. The memory of a shared, transcendental moment sticks around like a residue; searching to relive that moment compels us to keep going out, and finding it again makes us feel like part of something.

I asked Corridor organizer Campbell Thibo why he does so much unpaid work coordinating and promoting events like Corridor for the “community.” Thibo is a self-described “systems artist” who works in the media of dance, music, voice, guerrilla readings, and anarcho-gardening. For Corridor, he booked dancers Belle Wolf and Coleman Pester and the a cappella choir The Esoterics, and will be performing himself.

It just so happened that Thibo had already written a “reflective essay” in which he asks himself the same question, composed on a whim and sent to the other Corridor organizers after a long night of “writing e-mails with my thumbs, sending text after text with a pasted link to [a Stranger] article about [Corridor].” He wonders rhetorically to his collaborators, “Why do I do this?”

Thibo first considers that he’s doing it for the money. He writes, “If it is money—that I think I will become wealthy by convincing people to, one at a time, pay 20 dollars—I need to be more realistic. The most I have ever personally made from any night of performance I organized is 50 dollars.” He considers that perhaps it’s actually the fear of losing money that keeps him promoting into the night—all the organizers of Corridor fronted the costs, and if no one comes he won’t even recoup what he put into the event, which means “shelling out money I don’t have to various artists, or the embarrassing chain of negotiations with them to lower their stipend.”

He then says something I’ve always longed to hear an event organizer say: “This festival makes me look good . . . This makes me appear to be doing Important Things, working with Smart, Creative People, and acting Wise, Culturally. Along with that, I appear Generous. Festival planning is Narcissistic.”

He then considers one text in particular he’d sent about Corridor, to someone “very compelling, if perhaps a bit cocky,” whom he’d “had a crush on, briefly.” Deconstructing his motivations for the invitation, Thibo weighs the value of her admission ticket, the possibility of getting to know each other better, how her presence at the event would improve his experience of it, and yes, how good it makes him look to tell her that he planned this.

“A final thought comes to surface,” he then writes: “that perhaps she will actually come, and so will everyone else, and we will all see or hear or touch one other. Which—togetherness—is what I think this is about.”

Thibo continues, “I have not stopped believing in at least fragmentary universal connectivity, where people see one another briefly for who they really are. Looking at one another should challenge us toward compassion. . . . I do not know why we need media like music or art to facilitate meeting, if we do. But sharing an experience of music, especially of new music, critically, may allow us to see some of ourselves in an other. I believe these relationships gradually build to create what I would consider rich life.”

It seems these organizers think their efforts worthwhile because they hope to build a rich life, for themselves and others, using the tools of the magic Thom hopes for or the halo that McBride described. Kellye Kuh, another Corridor organizer, touches too on the flashing bridges of understanding that she hopes Corridor can build among us. “When something provocative happens in a room full of strangers, “ she says, “you’ll remember it. You’re sipping a hot cup of tea, shocked and blissed-out at the same time, feeling resonance at the core, and when you look around you’re aware you’re not the only crazy one.”

With musical performances by A Box in the Sea, Ahnnu, as_dfs, Beastnest, Black Hat, decimus, DJAO, LIMITS, Raica, Ramzi, Rene Hell, Sarah Davachi, The Esoterics, and x/o. Art installations by Bristol Hayward-Hughes, Ceci Cor-Leo, Coldbrew Collective, Grey Ellis + TARA, Leena Joshi, Jinx’ 75- A Live Visuals Studio, Annisa Amalia (with HimeHime), and Robin Cullen. Dance performances by Belle Wolf, Campbell Thibo, and Coleman Pester. - Seattle Weekly